Panel cancels testimony on cancer agency

Updated 9:58 pm, Wednesday, February 6, 2013

AUSTIN — Scheduled legislative appearances by two former top officials of the state cancer-fighting agency were canceled Wednesday because investigators looking into improprieties raised concerns the testimony could grant the ex-officials immunity.

"They said there were significant legal concerns public testimony by these two individuals might affect the criminal and civil investigation under way by their office," said Pitts, R-Waxahachie.

Gregg Cox, director of the DA's special prosecutions division, said immunity was one of several concerns the office had about the scheduled testimony. Under state law, Cox said, a witness cannot refuse to testify when summoned by a legislative committee, and is immune from prosecution if he answers a question after indicating the answer might incriminate him.

The cancellations came on a second straight day of legislative testimony about the problems at the agency, a $3 billion, taxpayer-funded assault on cancer that was launched in 2009 and has since awarded more than $800 million in grants.

The state auditor last week released a damning audit, documenting problems with two major grants already reported by newspapers and identifying flaws and conflicts of interest with a third, $25 million grant to a statewide clinical trials network. That organization shut down last week with little to show for the $10 million it had spent.

The audit found the network spent more than $300,000 in unallowable costs. But Wayne Roberts, CPRIT's interim executive director, said Wednesday the agency has found the amount is actually $1.3 million, much of that because of $9,000 monthly honorariums paid to certain members of the network's board of directors. He said those directors did not include Gilman or Gimson, who served on the board.

Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, the committee's vice chairman, said he wants the agency to survive, but said he also wants "the Legislature to be just as critical and outraged as we are when we talk about Medicaid payments - and quite frankly, I don't see it."

Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, co-author of the 2007 bill that created the agency, responded that the Legislature is "incensed and embarrassed" and called the revelations about CPRIT "one of the greatest disappointments of my tenure in the House."